


Child of the war

by Dissenter



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hashirama is Izuna's, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced War Crimes, Madara is Tobirama's half brother, The Senju and Uchiha have more in common than they like to admit, War, war children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-09-03 01:57:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: In which Senju Tobirama is born with red eyes, and Uchiha Izuna is born with red in his hair and both clans know exactly what that means.





	Child of the war

**Author's Note:**

> Because if the Senju and Uchiha had both stooped to murdering children, I find it hard to believe they didn't also stoop to other terrible things.

Senju Tobirama was born with blood red eyes, to a mother that loved him but couldn’t bear to look at him, and the clan whispered, but was not surprised. They knew. Red for fire, red for blood, red for the battlefield that was his father. He was not the only one, not the first, not the last, not even unusual in how he came to be. Such is the mundanity of suffering in war.

But his mother’s husband was the clan head, and the battlefield was there in Tobirama’s eyes a constant reminder of where he came from, and so when Senju Butsuma disappeared on a mission for three days and returned with a twisted satisfaction in his eyes the clan whispered, but was not surprised. It was, after all not the first time nor the last, that a man had looked at his wife/mother/sister’s battlefield child and decided to return the favour in kind.

…

Uchiha Izuna was born with dark red hair, so dark as to be almost black to the eyes of any but his own clan. All but invisible to most except when the sunlight hit it just so, but all too obvious to Sharingan eyes. They knew what he was, the Senju had intermarried enough with the Uzumaki over the years for the truth to be clear. Born of the battlefield, they whispered, child of war, child of nightmares. Bloodstained hair, bloodstained birth, born of war and for war.

But only when Madara could not hear, because Madara would not countenance their whispers. They were silent when Madara walked by, because while it was true that Uchiha Tajima was not Izuna’s father, and could not love him, Madara _was_ his brother, and he would burn the world for Izuna’s sake. And for that reason Madara was all the kin Izuna needed (and if there was another man who he might call brother, well, there were some things that were just not spoken of).

…

It was a truth, an understanding unspoken between them. Not a secret, it could never be that, but not something they ever said out loud, although they both knew, blood deep bone deep. Their brothers didn’t know. Their brothers didn’t care to know. But then their brothers had the luxury of not thinking of such things.

It was not a luxury either Tobirama or Izuna could indulge in, not when they were marked with the blood red of the battlefield that sired them, when it was plain for all to see what horrors had given them life. Even if the mirror hadn’t been a constant reminder, the truth was, the clans whispered, whenever their brothers could not hear, and so neither Izuna nor Tobirama was _allowed_ to forget.

They were after all children of the war.

Years spent facing each other across a battlefield, learning together, growing up together and yet they never spoke of it. Brother after brother had died on the very battlefield that had sired the two of them, and still they had not said a word. Hashirama and Madara, all the close kin either of them had left, had met by the riverbank and named each other brother-in-soul and still they had not spoken, had not admitted. They’d forced their brothers apart, in fear, in desperation, in duty, in the sure knowledge that to do otherwise would be death to their kin, both acknowledged and unacknowledged, and through all the resentment and recriminations that followed, they’d held their silence.

They’d stayed silent until the day that the battlefield that was father to them both finally forced their hands. Izuna had moved too slow, or perhaps Tobirama too fast, and in that moment Izuna’s death had stood over them both. The shingami had mantled his dark wings over them and waited to see how the blade would fall, and with death’s shadow had come a clarity neither of them could shake.

In another life, perhaps, Tobirama might have struck true, as duty to his clan demanded. Might have slain Izuna and in doing so broken Madara and doomed them all to a spiral of hatred and grief that would stretch long past their own deaths. But not in this life. In this life before the blade fell Tobirama had looked at Izuna, had looked at his enemy, the brother of his enemy, the child of the same war that had sired him, he had looked with the clarity that only death’s shadow could bring, and he’d turned his blade.

And then Izuna was on the ground winded, and Tobirama had him at swordpoint, and then, he’d stepped back, just half a step, and he’d looked Izuna dead in the eyes, and asked the question none of them, Senju or Uchiha, had dared ask in generations.

“Brother of my brother, are you not so very tired of killing kin?” He’d spoken the words softly, soft as new fallen snow, and yet, and yet the whole battlefield heard him. They heard him and froze, because Senju Tobirama, the clan head’s brother but not the clan head’s son, had said a thing not spoken of. They froze, and where the clatter and screams of battle had been, was only silence, and the whispering of the wind through treetops.

Because neither Tobirama nor Izuna were the first or the last, or even exceptional. This was the truth that everyone knew and no-one spoke out loud. That there was not a Senju or Uchiha living that didn’t share blood with the enemy. The war had gone on too long, there had been too many children born of its atrocities, and now they were all of them kinslayers, whenever they succeeded in striking down the enemy. The division between Senju and Uchiha had become so thin, so fragile, that a simple word could shatter it.

With a single soft spoken truth, Senju Tobirama had done what all his brothers’ desparate peacemaking efforts and clever arguments had failed to do. He had brought the battlefield to a standstill.

Izuna had lain there, feeling old beyond his years and so very very tired. He’d lain there, and looked up into the eyes of his enemy, of his brother’s brother and in the end there had only been one response to give.

“You know, brother of my brother. I rather think I am.” He drawled, with all the exhaustion of generations of war echoing through his voice.

The clans had looked on in slence as, with that admission Senju Tobirama had sheathed his blade, and held out his hand, and Izuna, Izuna had taken it, had allowed his sworn enemy, the brother of his brother twice over to pull him to his feet, and left his blade on the ground behind him.

No-one made a move to stop them as they walked away from the battlefield. No-one moved at all. In the distance Tobirama thought maybe he could hear his two half brothers arguing, trying to set out places and times for proper peace negotiations, but neither Tobirama nor Izuna was listening, their attention firmly fixed on each other. For once, someone else could handle the details. They were done with war.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn't clear, Uchiha Tajima is Tobirama's biological father, Senju Butsuma is Izuna's biological father.  
> For the purposes of this fic, activating the sharingan requires a particular mitochondrial mutation, meaning none of the half Uchiha kids born on the Senju side, get the sharingan, because they don't have Uchiha mothers.  
> I did think about taking this further, and writing about these four founding a village together and figuring out their relationship to each other and having various shenanigans, but I felt that would require a radically different tone to what i'd written, more fluffy and funny than serious. So I decided that this was a good enough place to leave it, with Tobirama and Izuna walking away from the war together, and a possibility of change.


End file.
